


High Times in Kaleidoscope Rames

by Azzandra



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Steampunk-adjacent, a world with some weirdly specific sumptuary laws as pertaining to color, accidentally drawn into aristocratic nonsense, and a protagonist with a very mundane life and job who nonetheless is part of the weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26882308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: Sometimes people went to great lengths for a spool of thread, for that little bit of status that came from acquiring a splash of color they could flaunt in public.It’s a hard life out there for the lower classes in the rainbowpunk midtopia.
Comments: 59
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago, I just stumbled onto it again on my blog recently, and I decided I should post it.  
> It was basically inspired by the word 'rainbowpunk' from this tumblr post: https://azzandra.tumblr.com/post/177589340011/ten-punks#notes
> 
> Though, it admittedly goes in a different direction than the post, and it's not a complete story so much as some fun setting noodling.

Iris willed her hands not to shake as she embroidered a small bird on the pocket of her coat. The teal thread was too precious to waste on mistakes, and she was already gripped by the fear that she would not manage to complete the design before the thread ran out.

She'd had it planned since arriving in the city what to do if she ever received her very own colored thread, and as an idea, it floated in her head for years. When she received her first spool, she would draw a little bird, right on the breast pocket of her coat, where everyone would see. Sitting by the window of her cramped room, she often practiced with white thread, patterns of birds done over and over, hand towels with flocks of white doves and bleached warblers piled in her wardrobe drawers.

Now, it was not practice anymore. Celeste Bluefount herself had reached into her pocket, and taken out a spool of noble teal thread that only the head of the Bluefount family could have dispensed so easily. The spool had felt heavy and luxurious in her hands as Iris accepted it. It had felt too valuable an item to be entrusted to her, much less gifted. The entire walk home, her hand had been wrapped around the spool in her pocket, every sound of feet shuffling against concrete giving her panicked thoughts about muggers coming to take it from her.

She told nobody about the thread, and when she reached the lodging house, she rushed upstairs without stopping to greet anyone in the dining room. The lamplight was too dim to sew by, and Iris did not wish to risk any mistakes, but she did stay up turning the spool of thread over and over in her hands, trying to calm her breathing.

When the sun cracked over the horizon, its first rays breaking into soft morning rainbows against the mist of the city's waterfall, Iris was already awake and sitting by the window, her needle and her coat at the ready. The light was still a diffuse gray down in Fogbow Commons, where her room was, but it was a clear light, getting stronger as it reflected against the whitewashed walls of the neighborhood.

Before she even realized it, the task was over, and Iris stared at the hummingbird embroidered on her coat pocket. Ideally, she'd have thread in more colors, or she'd do it in iridescent thread, but the shape was recognizable enough, and Iris did not think she would have more thread anytime soon to adorn her drab gray coat. For now, the hummingbird stood out by itself, a lonely flier to signify the favor she had done to House Bluefount.

And despite her fears, she'd not gotten even halfway through the spool of thread. She would have enough to do tiny patterns on other clothing, if she so wished. 

For now, she put the thread away. First in her thread box, where it looked strange among the white and gray thread she owned, but then, on second thought, she bundled it in a handkerchief and stashed it under her mattress. Sometimes her less considerate housemates would come to borrow sewing supplies, and often they did not ask before starting to rifle through her sewing kit.

They would see her coat and know that she had teal thread, but they were unlikely to attempt stealing it. Using Bluefount thread without the family's permission could carry steep punishments. At most they'd want to gawk at it.

Now came the true highlight of the day, as Iris dressed and donned her coat. She would go downstairs for breakfast, and they would all see.

Typical of Iris' luck, some ended up seeing earlier than others, as Zaffer Blackletter began pounding on her door. She knew it was him because he accompanied the pounding with bleating calls of,

"Morning, little bird! I know you're awake! I can hear you shuffling!"

Iris sighed.

"I heard that too!" Zaffer called out again.

It wasn't like she could just wait for him to leave. That occasionally worked, with his attention span, but she did have to leave eventually. She unlatched the door, and he burst through it like an uncoordinated storm sweeping across the room.

"Iris! My heart, my love!" he declared, hands to his chest.

"How much do you owe?" Iris asked.

He gasped, clutching his chest with a woundedness that even the New Rames Players would find overly theatrical. But he turned serious right away.

"A tenner would see me through to the end of the day," Zaffer said, smiling at her winningly.

All of Zaffer's smiles were winning. It was the only part of him you could say that about, since the rest of him was inclined towards losing rather large sums in gambling dens. It gave him the opportunity to practice his charms, both on overly tolerant friends that he would constantly hit up for money, and on the bookies who were constantly waiting on him to pay up. He was brown-eyed and willowy, and attractive for someone who'd gone through life wearing nothing but white and black.

Once, in a flash, as Zaffer gathered up the clutter in his room, Iris was sure she'd seen a spool of thread in there, bright yellow tinting into green. But if he had done any legitimate favors for anyone in the Greengold banking family, she was sure he'd be asking for money in better neighborhoods, so she never brought it up.

Iris turned towards her wardrobe, to dig out her tin of loose change, but just as she tried to move past him, Zaffer's hand came up to her shoulder, and turned her right around.

"Little bird!" he declared, eyes wide and fixed to her coat pocket.

"Yes?" Iris asked, tilting her chin up, trying for nonchalant and probably failing as she felt herself vibrating with pride.

"Congratulations!" he said, throwing his arms around her and lifting her up the ground in a hug.

Iris finally broke into a grin, her cheeks aching from how wide it was.

"I just got it yesterday!" she said, as Zaffer put her back on the ground. "From Celeste Bluefount herself!"

Zaffer's face rapidly cycled through various contortions of disbelief and amazement, but finally settled on something like wonder.

"Iris, what have you been up to?" he asked.

"Oh, well--"

"No, no, wait, don't tell me!" He gestured sharply to stop her, before grabbing her hand. "You have to tell the story downstairs, where everyone can hear it!"

But as he tried to pull her along, Iris would not come, instead digging her feet in.

"No," she said, with a pang of apprehension. "I'm--not supposed to spread this around."

Zaffer stared at her for a moment, searching her face, worried. Sometimes people went to great lengths for a spool of thread, for that little bit of status that came from acquiring a splash of color they could flaunt in public. And sometimes they got it because something bad happened: hit by some noble house's carriage, or caught in the crossfire of their conflicts, or maybe just subjected to abuse and paid off for it. Most of the time, it was for favors, but even those ranged from legitimate to less than.

There were people, Iris knew, who had entire spools of thread tucked away, unused, tainted by bad memories. Sometimes the thread ended up as unexpected inheritance to unsuspecting family members. There were always stories about people going through the belongings of some drab gray aunt, or some wrinkled uncle who'd never worn anything but white and black, and uncovering an entire box of thread in all the colors of the great houses. Many people dreamed about that sort of unexpected inheritance that would catapult them straight into status, and see them welcomed into Kaleidoscope Rames as an equal. It never happened, of course, but just the thought that it might was enough to give a little hope.

Iris didn't know what Zaffer was thinking, but she'd not done anything morally compromising to receive the thread, and she didn't want him to think so.

"It's nothing bad," she assured quickly, "it's just something I'd prefer to be discreet about."

"Alright," Zaffer shrugged, raising his hands in surrender. "If you're sure. But you simply must parade your coat around. I want to see the look on Ruby's face."

Iris laughed, and agreed. Ruby was one of the few other lodgers in the house to have any thread of her own: geometric bands of violet embroidery around all her shirt cuffs, with thread she'd inherited from her grandmother. She was terribly smug about it, for having done nothing to earn it.

"But first," Zaffer said, as he gestured in the direction of her money tin.

Iris all but rolled her eyes, but she went and picked out ten bits, piling the coins in Zaffer's expecting hands.

He grinned widely, eyes twinkling as he no doubt already planned where he was going to bet away this money.


	2. Chapter 2

The story that Iris was not going to tell began the previous day, on her lunch break.

She was in Kaleidoscope Rames because it was the time of the year when all the noble Houses commissioned the color surveys for their gardens and competed for the highest rating to rub in their neighbors' faces. Just like all her other co-workers in the survey office, she had been assigned one garden that day, which she was meant to finish up in a few days.

Accuracy was important, but since the season was kicking off in a few days, so was speed. The work wasn't complicated, but it was tedious, and the gardens were exceedingly large, and nobody would be sympathetic to the beleaguered survey workers if the task was not completed.

Iris herself had been assigned to the Winethroat family's garden. If one were to be pressed to name Scattersky's top three preeminent families, the Winethroats would be right up there with the Bluefounts and the Glittergolds. You could pick them out of any crowd for their particular red, a shade deep and faceted like expensive wine, and so lush you could almost taste it. Nobody had ever been able to replicate the dye, and the Winethroats were rightly proud of that. Though they were in the textile business, and dealt heavily in dyes as well, they hoarded the secret of the Winethroat Red to themselves.

Their garden was proportionate to their fortune, and though it was not the largest, it was perhaps the densest in Kaleidoscope Rames. Blooming flowers overflowed from every inch: wrapped around trellises and the pillars of little gazebos, or frothing off bushes which were artfully manicured to look wild and untamed. Even the artisanal fountains which cooled the air had spouts angled just right to catch the sunlight at any time of the day, and turn their misty halos into rainbows.

The household servant who led Iris out into the garden gave her a moment to pick her jaw off the ground before sniffing snootily.

"I should hope," the servant said, "that you will be done quickly."

"It should only take three days," Iris offered.

"Three days!" the servant repeated, losing her cool for a moment. "Can't you get it done by this afternoon?"

Iris gave the servant a look like she was completely cracked.

"I'm surveying a garden, not the lunch menu at the Fogbow Inn," Iris shot back, "so no, I can't 'get it done by this afternoon'."

She couldn't keep the bite of sarcasm from her voice, and the servant pursed her lips and looked chastened. She must have been new at the job, because Iris had met plenty of servants in Kaleidoscope Rames who could strip the skin off someone with just a look, and accepted no criticism no matter how well-founded.

"There will be a small gathering here, later today," the servant explained. "We would prefer if you were not... seen."

She looked Iris up and down, pointedly at her dour, unembellished gray. The servant herself had splashes of color across her uniform: red string to tighten her sleeves, red ribbon at her throat and braided through her hair. But even the rest of her suit was a nicer shade of gray than Iris' clothing.

"I'll try not to mar your backdrop," Iris replied.

The servant departed soon after, leaving Iris alone with her pen and clipboard.

The work was as involved as Iris expected, but it took the edge off some of the tedium just to be in that garden, surrounded by so much color. It was, in many ways, a sight not many got to see, even with all the garden parties the Winethroats managed to fit in a year. Iris marked down every shade she encountered and had to flip pages twice to get them all down. 

She crawled under bushes of bursting orange blooms as large as her heads, and stepped carefully over beds of wildflowers so tiny and varied in color they looked like paint spackles. A small hedge maze was made not out of hedges, but rows of giant gladiolas arrayed by shade so that following the path from red to blue would show you the way out. When emerging out the other side, Iris looked out onto this new part of the garden, and the flowers arranged in gradient images, and nearly started crying for the beauty, if not the amount of work she had ahead.

The Winethroats had not included any of the light sculptures, or clever mirror walls that were fashionable nowadays. It was all old-fashioned trellises, and wire sculptures clad in vines of flowers. Green was proportioned carefully, and where possible, replaced entirely. There were trees with anything from red to violet foliage, and grass that varied for a lively orange to deep blue. There were the birds, too: the ever-present hummingbirds, but Iris had also stumbled across a peacock, perched on a low tree branch and watching her judgmentally. She hadn't noticed it because its colors were not far off from the tree's iridescent blue foliage.

Iris did not think that her annotations of shade and nuance on a clipboard could do justice to the whole thing, though she put points liberally in the artistic impression category.

Even after hours of walking through the garden, her feet sore, her eyes overwhelmed, she managed to go through perhaps a quarter of the space.

The gathering the servant had mentioned was underway by now. Iris had passed the table as it was set, and had finished the survey in that area first, but as she'd scurried into the deeper parts of the garden, to stay out of sight as promised, she could still hear the clink of glasses or the odd burst of laughter when the wind turned just right.

It only served to remind Iris that it was past lunchtime, and she hadn't eaten anything. She would have liked to go to the kitchens, where usually there would be a cook or two willing to hand a survey worker a plate of leftovers, but she suspected everyone in the kitchen would be stressed about the garden party.

So Iris stumbled into the next best idea, and doubled back to a plum tree she had spotted earlier on.

The plums were fat and glossy on the tree branches, but Iris picked a few off the ground instead, figuring it would get her in less trouble if she got caught. 

Crouched in the grass scarfing down plums actually brought her a bit closer to the party. Not enough to risk being seen, but from here she could hear the water music and the wind chimes over the murmur of conversation. She could picture the rest of it all too well, even though she'd never attended a high-class party.

But some of the periodicals that were always lying around at her lodgings always reported on these kinds of get-togethers, with vivid illustrations of who wore what. The Winethroats were inclined towards cravats, but most of Scattersky's high society tended to wild variation in dress. That was the entire point. They could afford to, so they had to constantly show each other up.

Iris was halfway through her third plum when she was so startled she nearly inhaled it, pit and all, because someone stumbled through the bushes and damn near fell over her.

She sprang to her feet, tossing away the plum, and was ready to make her excuses, but instead found herself grabbing the person by the arm, steadying them.

"Whoa, there," she said, anything more dying in her throat when she realized this had to be a drunk party guest, probably wandered off to puke in the bushes.

He turned to look at Iris with a suspicious frown, but an unfocused gaze. His suit was a gradient from turquoise to burnt orange, and his shirt was a soft yellow closer to cream. Streaks of dark blue were dyed into his black hair, the color vivid like only very expensive hair dye could achieve. Iris knew, because she'd tried the cheap stuff, and it never looked anything like this.

"Y're not th' help," the man slurred.

"Uh... I'm not... part of the staff," Iris confirmed, "but did you need help?" Even as the question left her mouth, she wanted to slap herself, because doing anything more than turning him back towards the party and giving him a good shove in the right direction was likely to get her in trouble.

"Yer... city worker," the man continued, after an uncomfortably long moment inspecting her clothing.

"I'm from the survey office," she explained.

This seemed to set him in motion, because he shook himself like trying to clear his head, and then he shifted to throw an arm over her shoulders.

"Y'need t' help," he said.

"Ummmm." Iris wasn't sure she liked all this physical proximity. "Do you need a glass of water? Or a dunk in water, for that matter? Something to sober up?"

"M'not drunk," he said, a bit louder and a lot more belligerent. Iris suppressed the urge to shush him, but he seemed to catch on himself, and lowered his voice on the next word. "Poisoned."

Iris blinked as the word percolated through her head.

Poisoned?

_Poisoned?!_

Well, she'd heard about that kind of thing happening at high society parties, but she didn't think it was usually during cheerful afternoon tea in a garden. Seemed the kind of thing they saved for dim, smoky backrooms where everyone was... was wearing feathered masks and talking in fan language, or something.

"Yer gonna take me home," he said very carefully, like he was concentrating very hard on controlling his mouth properly.

"Home? You need a doctor!" Iris hissed.

"Got a doctor," he grunted. "Home. Bluefount 'state."

Oh. The Bluefount estate. Iris realized that meant the person now draped over her like she was his personal mobility device was the young heir to the family, Cobalt Bluefount. She tried not to think about it too hard, lest she drop and break the heir to one of Scattersky's three most important family.

"That's down the street," Iris pointed out. 

"Dun' worry," he said, "got a getaway hidden."

He prodded her along to the far end of the garden, past the gladiola maze, and she obediently carried him along, though every time he stumbled, she was worried he would keel over dead and leave her alone in this garden with the corpse of an aristocratic family's heir to account for.

When they reached the far end of the garden, it turned out that behind a bush of wild pink roses he actually had a small hot air balloon hidden. It was tethered, floating just a few inches off the ground, and decorated with cheerful garlands. The balloon itself was an eye-searing combination of bright yellow and red. She briefly wondered how he'd managed to hide it, but then again, after walking the entire length of the garden with his dead weight hanging on her, she knew there were plenty of places to hide things.

He popped open the door to the basket for her, and shuffled over into the driver's seat. Iris took the passenger's seat, apprehensive. There were a lot of levers, connecting to ropes for a series of devices which festooned the hot air balloon.

She would have offered to fly the balloon, but she suspected that even addled by poison, Cobalt Bluefount still made a better pilot than she did, so she sat quietly and watched as he pulled and pushed various levers.

There was a hiss as a flame above their heads came to life, and then a thud as a sandbag was released, and just like that, the balloon bobbed in place once, and then rapidly ascended.

Iris tried to enjoy the ride as much as she could, with her hands clenched to the armrests as she hyperventilated and tried not to expect Cobalt to crash them.

* * *

When the balloon touched down in the Bluefounts' balloon pad, an elevated platform just on the roof of the house, there were already servants waiting. They swarmed the balloon, tying it off and weighing it down, and Iris found herself handled like luggage and brusquely debarked.

"What's this, then?" a voice cut over the buzz of activity, just as Cobalt was being helped out of the balloon.

Iris nearly jumped right back into the balloon when she realized the statuesque woman who'd just arrived was none other than the matriarch of the family herself, Celeste Bluefount. Her hair was twisted up, held together with a feathered teal clasp, and her dress was body-fitting velvet and also teal, down to her knees, where it stopped to reveal stockings in elaborate desaturated purple lace. Her shirt, wide-sleeved and tied off at the neck with a teal ribbon, was a fresh grass green color that gave her a youthful air, but her put-together outfit was concealed by a striped shawl that she seemed to have grabbed only to ward off the chill of evening up on the windy roof. It was gold and black, and didn't really match anything else she was wearing. 

Celeste Bluefount also had that kind of face, achieved either by comfortable living or by expert application of make-up, that one could not put a precise age to.

Iris wilted when the woman looked her way, even though she did not look particularly annoyed.

"And you are?" Celeste asked.

"Iris Roseribbon," she replied. "...I'm from the survey office?" She added, hoping that explained it.

"Ran into her on m' way out," Cobalt said, as he tottered to his feet and draped himself over the shoulders of the nearest servant. "Helped me get outta there."

Celeste gave Iris a more appraising look, up and down, taking her in. Then she nodded.

"You will be sent along then," Celeste said, then as an afterthought, reached into the shawl, where apparently she had a pocket.

She took out a sewing bag. Iris inhaled sharply when she recognized the crest of Bluefount on it, and held her breath when Celeste reached inside.

She took out a spool of Bluefount teal thread, and presented it to Iris almost like an afterthought. A tip.

Iris took the spool like it was precious treasure, and once it was in her hands, she stared dumbly at it, unsure what to do.

"Th-thank you, milady!" Iris blurted out belatedly.

"Mm, yes, do be along," Celeste gestured over her shoulder, her attention already turning to her son. "The help will show you out."

Iris nodded, as a sour-faced servant took her by the elbow and guided her along.

"And do be discreet," Celeste added before Iris was just out of earshot.

It didn't occur to Iris until much later that it was just as much a warning as it was an order.


	3. Chapter 3

Having fallen behind on the first day's survey, Iris had every intention of doubling down and working quickly on the second. The last thing she needed was the Winethroats to start putting the squeeze on city officials because their survey wasn't finished in time for the new season's start, because the only thing in Scattersky that trickled down was mud and political pressure.

That being said, Iris didn't think she got a particularly good start to the day, because just as she was leaving the survey office, she crossed paths with Cobalt Bluefount waiting by the reception desk.

His frustrated mien was explained by the 'Back in 5 minutes' sign on the desk. The fact that he didn't seem to recognize Iris might have been explained by the fact that he'd been poisoned the last time he'd seen her, but Iris more quickly put it down to the way his eyes slid right over her like she was unimportant. Annoyance flared at the back of Iris' head, something akin to insult, even as Cobalt Bluefount's lip curled in bored contempt.

"You, there. I'm looking for a survey worker," he said, now perfectly coherent and enunciating his words with a high-class drawl that some fancy tutor must have beaten into him since a young age. "Iris Roseribbon."

"Never met her," Iris replied, breezing right past him.

He did not even notice the bird embroidered on her coat pocket, despite it being very evidently done in Bluefount teal, so she did not feel anyone but him was particularly responsible for the fact that he would be waiting in the survey office's cramped reception area for a considerably longer time than five minutes. They hadn't had a proper receptionist since Violet left for a smoke two months ago and neglected to return. None of them had bothered to remove the sign since then, leaving it for whoever would be hired next as receptionist.

* * *

Iris arrived to the Winethroat estate ready to do her job without further Bluefount interruptions.

She did not even properly know the source of her annoyance, or even realize she was annoyed until she notice that the death-grip she had on her clipboard had turned her knuckles white. She sighed, then, and flexed her fingers. 

One could hardly assess accurately in a combative state of mind, though the general school of thought seemed to be that sharp eyesight and a talent for accurately identifying hues was more important. Iris didn't hold to that; certainly those were things that could be measured, but having an artistic sense for color was both more esoteric and more useful in her experience. She couldn't very well make good time by going around with a color wheel and a hue index chart. 

Not that the Winethroats cared for anything but a score that exceeded the cap. It would have been humiliating to have anything short of an immeasurable wealth of color in their estate gardens. All their other friends exceeded the cap even if they had to bribe every survey worker that passed their threshold, and Iris hadn't had any of those assignments once it was evident she was not inclined to accepting bribes. The survey office liked to maintain good relationship with the inhabitants of Kaleidoscope Rames by moral-matching their workers with their subjects of inspection. It was, Iris supposed, a win-win in their view.

Maybe that was part of what had annoyed her about seeing Cobalt Bluefount in the office that morning, now that she thought about it.

Had she been bribed in some way? It felt less like a favor she'd done and more like whatever sinister thing Zaffer suspected, when Cobalt Bluefount couldn't even pick her from a crowd, and she had a bad feeling about why he'd be there the next day. She trusted her gut in matters of both color and interpersonal relationships, and it had gotten her far enough in life that she was doing fine, if not spectacular. She did not truck with people who aimed for spectacular, which was probably why Zaffer was the closest thing she had to a best friend.

Maybe she was just being petty.

She passed the plum treeand wandered over to the part of the garden that she had been barred from the other day. The area was clearly a good fit for garden parties: three carved wooden tables and two dozen chairs were arranged under a trellis arch wound with delicate pink floral vines, and there was a soft formal perfume on the air.

Iris was startled to note that the area was occupied even though no party was in progress. A woman sat at one of the tables, dressed in a deep burgundy dress, off-set by bright magenta stockings and blouse. She had the typical Winethroat cravat at her neck, dark maroon and pinned in place with a ruby just large enough to be noticeable but not ostentatious. The woman's brown hair streaked gold in the sunlight, and her hand was so very elegant as she held the stem of a wineglass.

The wine in the glass looked like an easterly blue--strange that a member of the Winethroat household would drink imported wine instead of one of their own, but then, maybe after a while even they got sick of all the rich reds they could produce. Iris was more of a fruit juice girl, herself.

The woman belatedly noticed Iris, frozen as she was in place by indecision--quietly creep back into the bushes, or carry on her survey without minding the woman?--but when she did, she sighed deeply, at nothing Iris did so much as a general existential exhaustion.

"Goodness, dear, don't skulk," the woman said. "Have you seen my prize gladiolas yet? Go score those if you haven't."

"I have seen the gladiolas, yes," Iris replied, and the identity of the woman clicked into place now: this was likely Auburn Winethroat, the one of the Winethroat sisters most invested in gardening. She was not kidding about her gladiolas winning prizes. 

"Hm," Auburn Winethroat made a non-committal sound and swirled her wine in the glass. It caught the sunlight, reflecting in shades of azure. 

This seemed like the end of the conversation, so Iris proceeded to score the bushes laden with fuchsia flowers that delineated the small party space. She tried to act as casual about it as possible, but she felt Auburn Winethroat's attention like cold fingers against the back of her head.

That was ridiculous, she probably wasn't even paying any attention to Iris.

But then Iris turned around, and Auburn Winethroat had risen from her seat and stepped close enough to Iris that it was a surprise she hadn't felt the woman's breath on her back. Certainly she would have expected to smell the alcohol.

"I do hope you haven't found anything distasteful," Auburn Winethroat remarked. "Or if you have, that it doesn't affect our score. I do believe I saw Cobalt Bluefount stumble drunk around here, and I wouldn't put it past him to sick up in the bushes just to spite me."

"No, ma'am," Iris said, alarm crawling up and down her back. "Nothing distasteful."

"Hm," Auburn Winethroat made that little sound again. Her gaze was drifting at some point over Iris' shoulder; much like Cobalt Bluefount, she didn't really give Iris the benefit of actually looking at her. She was grateful for that, in this case, because her eyes somehow didn't catch the bird embroidered on Iris' coat pocket--or at least not the thread it was done in. "I would say the most useful thing he would have done all year is provide compost for the plants, but anything passing that man's lips is likely to be poison more than anything."

That sense of alarm fell to Iris' stomach, where it metamorphosed into dread. Why would she bring up poison if not...?

"Oh, but what am I doing interrupting," Auburn Winethroat sighed, and made a dismissive gesture. "Do carry on, dear. Finish quick. The new season is nearly upon us, you know."

Iris nodded numbly, and rushed off to the next part of the garden.

* * *

After finishing for the day, the last thing Iris wanted was to return to the survey office. She couldn't be entirely sure, anyway, that Cobalt Bluefount wasn't still there, tapping his foot as he stared down the 'Back in 5 minutes' sign at the reception, but more likely, someone would have told him already that he missed Iris.

She headed, instead, to The Umber Cup, which was a coffeehouse just outside Kaleidoscope Rames, where the dwellings of the rich and affluent gave way to new money and the merchant class. The area had begun to be known, of late, as Dragonfly Roam, after the park inaugurated there just the past decade--not least of all because the up-and-comers who lived in that neighborhood wanted to distinguish themselves from the less prestigious Fogbow Commons.

At least they still allowed the Fogbow riff-raff to pass through, Iris mused as she entered The Umber Cup. It was a clean establishment, though usually rowdy with students the later in the evening it got, and Iris never did like their coffee as much as their variety of fruit blends. Mostly she came here since discovering that the regular brewster came from the same hometown as her.

Sure enough, Peri was working that night as well, and flagged Iris down nearly as soon as she walked through the door.

"Can I interest you in something stronger than lemon squeezings tonight?" Peri asked as Iris came to prop up against the long bar behind which Peri worked. There were no stools--this was not a pub and Peri didn't like anyone hovering while she worked anyway--but there was a free space just off the side where people could wait for their drinks. 

The Umber Cup was mostly quiet that evening. It was right after finals, so most of the student clientele was off draining the city's supplies of alcohol. They'd been making short work of the coffee supplies all throughout the actual finals period.

"Orange juice?" Iris requested blithely, and Peri shook her head in mock disapproval.

But, regardless, she turned to her countless little taps and faucets, and started making a fruit blend for Iris: something sweet and colorful, the exact details of which Iris usually left at Peri's discretion.

They had never been friends when they lived in the same sad little town, mostly on account of not speaking much. They had both been quiet, bland-faced little girls who kept to themselves, and as such had not known one way or the other whether they had anything in common. But Iris came to Scattersky to work and send money back home to a largely ungrateful coterie of younger siblings, and Peri had come to Scattersky about the same time to... be elsewhere, mostly, from what Iris guessed.

Peri was, colloquially speaking, a magpie--one of those women who dressed in black and white like men and stole their women besides. Iris supposed that other women were shiny baubles in this metaphor--Iris personally liked to think of herself as one of those glass rings the ladies in Kaleidoscope Rames wore. Peri, so far, had not magpied her, but then, she was doubtless in Scattersky because she wanted to expand her choices beyond what their little hometown had to offer. Iris couldn't really shake her provincial roots as easily.

Quicker than she expected, Peri slid a tall glass of fruit blend towards Iris. It was a gradient orange turning to red towards the bottom, and it foamed to green on top.

Iris gave the glass a long, grateful look, admiring the colors before even taking a sip. With all the money she sent home, Peri's discounted drinks were one of the few indulgences she could afford nowadays. She was going to have to savor this one.

"Bad day?" Peri asked.

"I could use a straw," Iris said.

"Oof, real bad, then," Peri concluded, and provided the straw.

* * *

It was well past dark when Iris returned to the boarding house. Anyone still awake at that hour was holed up in their room, so she shuffled up the stairs and through the dark corridor in silence, orienting herself by the cracks of light she could see under her fellow tenants' doors. Ruby was asleep, as expected; Saffron was not only awake, but by the play of shadows under the door, restlessly pacing her room again.

She passed another door and discovered that Zaffer was awake, which was surprising only in the sense that Zaffer was there at all. She would have expected him to be out gambling at this time. It was rare he was back in his room before midnight.

Iris had only just turned her key in her own lock when Zaffer's door opened, momentarily blinding Iris in the wash of light.

"Little bird, back at your nest so late!" Zaffer declared, but his voice edged into uncharacteristic worry.

He was looking back over his shoulder with an air of concern that not even every bookie in Scattersky managed to inspire in him, and so Iris froze in place with her hand on the key, wondering what fresh batch of trouble Zaffer had managed to find.

"You've had a gentleman caller today, you know!" he said. "Very insistent one, in fact!"

"I most certainly did not," Iris replied, because it sounded like another one of Zaffer's set-ups for some convoluted joke that inevitably ended with him asking to borrow money.

"No, no," Zaffer said quickly, "there really was someone. Look--" He grabbed Iris' wrist and tugged her over to his room.

Bewildered, Iris let herself be pulled through the door. It wasn't until the door clicked closed behind her that she came to regret it, because sitting in Zaffer's chair lone desk chair was Cobalt Bluefount, with a sour look on his face.

"'Never met her,' huh?" Cobalt Bluefount said, repeating the same words she'd given him that morning.

Iris regarded Cobalt Bluefount coolly in return.

"Technically correct," she replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Where did you get this coffee?"  
> "You wouldn't know it, it's _Umber ground_."
> 
> Also, hey, by popular demand I am continuing this.


	4. Chapter 4

Iris supposed she wasn't going to be able to retreat to her room now that she had been spotted, but a gnawing anxiety about what had happened while she was away would have kept her from going anyway.

Cobalt Bluefound crossed his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow like he expected Iris to explain herself. Which was absolutely daft, since if anyone had to explain themselves it was Cobalt; Iris had been nowhere but where she was meant to be, whereas Cobalt Bluefount had apparently lost his way to Kaleidoscope Rames. Yet it didn't seem to occur to him that he should at least tell her what he wanted.

Iris realized fairly quickly that she wasn't going to be able to maintain her image of Scattersky's elite as rarefied, impressive creatures if she was to interact with him, so she delayed as much as possible. She looked to Zaffer instead.

Poor Zaffer looked more stressed than she'd ever seen him, which was to say showing any amount of stress at all, even if it was about a thimbleful. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"He showed up in the afternoon," Zaffer explained. "Insisted on waiting for you, and wouldn't leave until you got here. I stashed him in my room before Ruby and the other mill workers could spot him and start questioning why you have some pied miscreant lurking by your door."

"'Pied miscreant'?!" Cobalt Bluefount repeated, his voice reaching a pitch that was not high so much as ridiculous. If this had been a street comedy, the audience would have yelled at him to tone it down.

"It's fine, Zaffer," Iris sighed. "Quick thinking."

"Pied. Miscreant," came the echo again.

But Zaffer only seemed to relax. "This is going to cost you, little bird. Now you've got to tell me what trouble you stumbled into."

"I didn't think I'd stumbled into any," Iris replied. "I just thought I was returning a drunk idiot to his mother."

"I was poisoned," Cobalt interjected, now that he was sidetracked by a new and different assault on his character. "And 'pied miscreant'? Me?" No, there he was back on that one again.

"I was willing to accept you were poisoned when I didn't know you and was willing to be generous in my assessment," Iris addressed him directly, "but considering your behavior today, drunk seems more in line with your general disposition."

Cobalt sucked in a breath, and opened his mouth again.

"Yes," Iris interrupted. "Pied miscreant. You heard correctly."

His mouth snapped closed. Zaffer made a quiet wheezing sound in the background, like he couldn't believe the exchange.

This was not the track Iris would have wanted the conversation to take, and on some level she felt galled that a woman as poised as Celeste Bluefount had this embarrassing a son. It was hard not to feel resentful at least a little for having the illusion of an otherwise impressive family shattered like this.

No, it was time to focus.

"Why are you here?" Iris asked.

Cobalt seemed to remember himself then.

"Right," he said abruptly, and coughed as he recovered the shattered pieces of his dignity. "Right! Why I'm here! Back when we met--"

"In the Winethroats' garden?"

"Back then. I was holding something in my hands," Cobalt continued, holding his palms out.

"No," Iris said.

"Wh-- No? What do you mean no?"

"You didn't have anything in your hands. You stumbled out of the bushes, and your hands were empty as you--" Iris gesticulated in a vague flailing gesture. "You weren't carrying anything when I stopped you from eating dirt."

"That can't be right," Cobalt argued, crossing his arms again. "I wouldn't have dropped it."

"Where is it, then?" Iris asked, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

He sputtered, shoulders hunkering defensively.

"Look, you weren't carrying anything when you came across me, but by then you'd passed through a bush," Iris said. "Go back and look for it there. If you dropped it, it's somewhere between the plum tree and the garden party area."

"I can't just go back," Cobalt replied. "I don't have an invitation."

"Are you telling me you can't even talk to your rich friend about looking for your lost property?" Iris asked, growing irritated. "You're kidding me. Zaffer, if I dropped something in your room, what would you do?"

"Return it to you post-haste, sweetling," Zaffer replied cloyingly.

"If I just said I think I dropped something in your room?"

"I'd be tearing up the carpets to help you find it," Zaffer said, nodding along.

"Obviously the relationships I maintain are slightly more complicated than yours," Cobalt retorted, looking entirely too haughty.

"That's why I'm never going to end up poisoned by Zaffer," Iris said.

"Well," Zaffer said, a bit more hesitant, "you've never had me brew tea before, so let's not make assumptions for the future."

Cobalt made an imperious cutting gesture with his hand through the air, like a command for silence. Iris and Zaffer did fall silent, but only because they were incredulous anyone actually acted like that in real life, and not just in comedies.

"My point is, I require you to go back and look for the pouch I dropped," Cobalt said.

"No."

"But--"

"I'm going back, don't get me wrong. I have one more day of surveying to complete. I'm just not looking for your lost property. Grow up and look for it yourself."

"It's not as though I am asking without being able to offer anything in return," Cobalt sniffed, and reached into his pocket.

He produced the spool of blue thread with much less grace than his mother had. There was rather something petulant in the gesture, like he was dangling bait. And if Iris hadn't had a spool of her own hidden in her room, she might have even considered the thought.

Just a bit of embroidery, a suggestion of color along the collar or sleeve, could get her foot in the door in a lot of other places. A better paying job, better lodgings. But a little was a little, regardless. What he was offering was not enough to make any more of a difference than the thread she already had.

"And are you under the impression that I'm so cheaply bought?" Iris replied frostily.

This seemed to put Cobalt ill at ease. He looked at the spool of thread in his hands with dismay, as though it had betrayed him; yes, he truly had expected Iris to fall all over herself in order to obtain it.

The tension in the room ratcheted up by a few degrees; Cobalt remained looking at the spool of thread like he expected it to give him answers. Iris waited quietly as the long pause stretched, damning, between them. 

A crunching sound broke the silence.

Cobalt and Iris both looked at Zaffer, sitting off to the side with an open brown bag and a handful of mixed nuts. He froze with his mouth full.

"Well, I didn't get to go eat dinner with him here," Zaffer muttered apologetically, and stuffed the rest of the nuts in his hand into his mouth, chewing more rapidly. Cobalt was looking increasingly incensed as his dramatic momentum was utterly wrecked.

"I want a whole bolt," Iris said.

Cobalt's head whipped around back to Iris.

"Excuse me?"

"A whole bolt of cloth," Iris said more confidently. 

Cobalt sputtered.

"You took a spool from my mother!"

"I accepted a spool from your mother because she's a poised and polite exemplar of her social class," Iris corrected. "I'm putting a tax on your behavior as a caricature of Scattersky's upper social classes."

Zaffer's chewing took on a more interested rhythm.

But Cobalt seemed to be all out of sputter for now, and his shoulders slumped into begrudging acceptance.

"A bolt of Bluefount teal," he promised, "as long as you recover my property."

"Good. I'll take the spool of thread as retainer."

No, it turned out Cobalt had quite a bit of sputtering left in him.

But he did relent in the end. He was the only one in this situation with anything to lose.


	5. Chapter 5

Iris knew, intellectually, that it wasn't as though she was going to be doing much more that day than what she had already set out to do. Looking for Cobalt's lost pouch was only going to be a short detour, and anyway, it wasn't like she was likely to find anything. She'd get to keep a spool of thread whichever way this went, even if she didn't search for the item.

It even occurred to her to pretend she'd looked for it and not found it, just for the privilege of never having to see Cobalt again. The only thing that stopped her was that she was a fairly bad liar.

Zaffer, more self-sacrificing than he needed to be, had promised to keep Cobalt occupied and away from their boarding house for the day.

And as for Auburn Winethroat, Iris had relayed the strange conversation from the other day, though it was more like Auburn had been speaking at her, and apparently not saying anything particularly new to begin with.

"Oh, her," Cobalt had flicked his hand dismissively, "she's been talking about me getting poisoned since we met. Probably planted the idea in the heads of everyone in our social circle. I doubt she'd have gone through with it."

"So you're saying," Zaffer said slowly, "that practically everyone you know has thought about poisoning you?"

"No," Cobalt replied a bit too quickly. "I just mean, the idea of me getting poisoned--"

"What--like on accident?" Iris asked.

"Well," Cobalt stalled over an answer, opening and closing his mouth to explain, "just the idea of it, you know, of me being poisoned--"

"Poisoning isn't something that happens spontaneously, you know," Iris interrupted. "Someone usually has to be the one to..." She mimicked stirring a spoon in a tea cup, but perhaps not very well, because Cobalt and Zaffer were giving her vaguely confused looks. Still, they must have gleaned her meaning from context.

Cobalt shook his head.

"Nobody would dare," he said.

"Haven't they already?" Zaffer asked, his voice turning high-pitched with disbelief.

Cobalt's face pinched into an unpleasant expression, and Iris suspected the real reason he spent all his time with a social circle that had all thought about poisoning him was that at least they allowed him to save face. They would think their ugly thoughts only behind a pleasant veneer, and Cobalt likely thought if it was out of sight, it was out of mind. His mind, at least. Not so much for the people who actually poisoned him; presumably they more closely adhered to the saying 'actions speak louder than words'.

At any rate, the conversation moved on awkwardly from there.

This brought Iris here: at the Winethroat estate once more, about to finish her survey.

The last leg of the survey would be around the outer gardens, that stretch of land that the common populace could see through the spiked iron-wrought fence of the estate. Just as one wore their best suit in public, here was where some of the homeowners in Kaleidoscope Rames also placed their most colorful and impressive-looking stock. 

The ones who had more valuable plants tended to secret them away in guarded greenhouses for exclusive viewing parties with only their richest friends. The Winethroats, however, were a populist sort of socialite. Their outer gardens were brimming with recognizable yet very expensive cultivars that even the most common of folk could recognize and covet. And, apparently in recognition of the fact, they also had a buffer between the fence and the valuable blooms, so that nobody could reach through the fence and pluck any of the flowers.

Iris waded her way through bushes of beautiful camellias, lush and redolent, with petals in every shade of wine, until she had noted all the varieties and scored them appropriately.

It was around lunch when she dared circle back to the plum tree, and the place where she had seen Cobalt stagger through the bushes. She found, in the grass, two plum pits that she had thrown there herself, and then, once she knelt down, she saw it: hanging on the branch of a bush was a pouch of deep maroon velvet.

She had to weave her hands into the hedge, through the branches--it had to have gotten stuck there when Cobalt staggered through the bushes, and remained unnoticed as it was hidden by the leaves--but she tugged it out without too much difficulty.

The pouch was no larger than her palm, and whatever it contained, in was a single solid object, roughly the size and shape of a compact mirror, and a little bit heavier. A tin of something, maybe?

Iris didn't inspect it, only palmed it and slipped it into her coat's inner pocket in a single smooth motion. She made like she was adjusting her coat as she rose to stand, and that was probably for the best, because as she turned around, she was faced with her second Winethroat sister for the week.

Scarlet Winethroat was immediately recognizable, because she looked exactly like her photographs in the Scattersky Times' scandal pages: slightly disheveled, with a smile that parsed as tipsy even when she was completely sober. The difference was that the low-colorization photos never did justice to the bright red shade of her lipstick, or her green eyes. Her dress was striped in the same two shades of red and green, but the beading suggested evening party, more than noon-time garden walk.

"I trust we're racking up the points," Scarlet Winethroat said in a slow slur.

Good grief, was she drunk already? At this time of day? Iris froze in place, unsure how to react. She looked around, like helpful strangers were going to emerge from the bushes, but the garden was utterly empty of anyone else, not even a stray gardener passing by. Well, of course it was, Iris had waited for no witnesses before she came to search for the pouch. How had Scarlet escaped her notice, the better question was.

"Uh... there's a ceiling," Iris replied, reaching for the first thing she could think of.

Scarlet blinked, narrowed her eyes, and looked upwards.

"Is there?" Scarlet asked, astounded.

"A points ceiling," Iris clarified, with a bit of bite to her voice. "Past a certain score, the points don't matter anymore because you've reached the highest rating."

"Goodness," Scarlet said, "then what are you even still doing here?"

"I get paid by the workday," Iris shrugged. Which was true, because the salaried positions were nearly all on the regulation side of the survey office. But Iris had worked this job long enough to be a tenured wage employee, and made just about as much as a salaried worker anyway. That was about as well as she could do, when the salaried workers tended to be the kind of people with a bit more color in their wardrobe. But a bolt of fabric might solve that little discrepancy for Iris...

"Enterprising little thing, aren't you?" Scarlet said, a smile oozing across her features. "Say, you wouldn't have happened to be here a couple of days ago?"

Iris knew the panic must have shown across her face, because Scarlet's own gaze turned sharp, and her unctuous smile cracked wider, showing her canines.

"Uh," Iris willed herself not to touch the pocket as she blurted out, "I'm very sorry about the plums."

This seemed to send Scarlet for a loop. Her smile froze.

"Pardon, dear?" Scarlet asked, the words shooting out between her gritted teeth. The smile was taking on more the appearance of a rictus.

"A lunch wasn't provided and I thought you wouldn't miss the plums?" Iris pointed up, and Scarlet's neck craned back as she looked to the plum tree, and the juicy fruit hanging jewel-bright from the branches.

"Ah." Scarlet said, her expression shading into displeasure. "No, dear, not that. I don't care about plums, dear."

Iris would bet Scarlet didn't care about plums at all outside as a flavor for schnapps, and at the end of the day, Iris cared even less. She was only glad the misdirection had worked to cover Iris' lapse in composure.

"I was only curious, you see," Scarlet continued, a much smaller and friendlier smile coming over her face, as if her earlier predatory grin hadn't even happened, "because I have this friend. Cobalt Bluefount. Do you know Cobalt Bluefount, dear?"

Iris didn't think she was going to get far on lying, and the frequency with which Scarlet was calling her 'dear' was starting to gain a threatening edge to it, so she opted for a creative presentation of the truth.

"Oh right, the drunk who came stumbling through here," Iris said.

"Drunk, you say?" Scarlet asked, her hand going to her chest like she was shocked--shocked, she'd tell you--to hear a member of the upper classes was stumbling about drunk in her garden.

"I only recognized him because his hair was dyed blue," Iris explained.

"Mmh, yes, the dye job," Scarlet muttered, like she was repeating an inside joke to herself. Her own hair, which might have been a light brown naturally, was dyed an even, dark red except for where her roots were growing out. "Well," Scarlet said, her voice turning cheerful, "you must be getting on, probably. Yes?"

"...Yes?" Iris said, confused as Scarlet ushered her towards the garden path. Not that Iris didn't want to get out of there as quickly as possible, but Scarlet making it this easy on her made Iris suspicious.

What had she said to Scarlet to warrant that flash of relief?

Unsettled, but unable to question much of anything, Iris watched Scarlet leave and then continued her survey of the Winethroat estate. The Winethroat gardens were already past the highest point score, so there was no real disadvantage to them if the survey ended now, but Iris didn't want to break routine.

It was only the nagging suspicion she'd made a mistake that had Iris unsettled, because she didn't know what the mistake had been.

* * *

Maybe the entire interlude had spooked Iris, but she didn't go directly to the agreed meeting place with Cobalt. She stopped by the Umber Cup first, and was relieved to find Peri on shift again.

"Fruit juice?" Peri guessed, looking up from her bar with a smile.

"Lemonade," Iris ordered, before adding more gravely, "pink."

Peri sucked in a breath sympathetically, because she knew Iris' moods by her drink order, if nothing else.

"And a favor, if that's on the secret menu," Iris added more quietly. She'd almost been hoping it was too quiet for Peri to hear, but Peri gave Iris a curious look as she poured out pink lemonade into a tall glass.

"Let's say it's a custom order, but it depends on the favor," Peri replied, and slid the drink over to Iris. A straw was provided without question.

"Right." Iris looked at her lemonade, and the condensation already sweating up the outside of the glass. There were ice cubes in the glass, and Iris poked her straw between them, stirring absent-mindedly. "So, it's not huge, I just need to leave something with you for a bit. If you're willing to hold it."

Peri made a curious hum at that, and Iris reached into her coat and produced the velvet pouch. She made sure she blocked the view of it with her body, and Peri didn't pick it up, only leaned over to stare at the pouch on the bar.

"It's not dangerous, is it?" Peri asked.

"Well, someone did get poisoned over it, but I think that would have happened either way, judging by the circumstances."

"Mysterious!" Peri looked at Iris, her voice full of humor but her eyes peering intensely. The inspection was discomfiting, but Iris endured it, if only because she suspected this was what Peri's acceptance of the favor hinged on. "Well, I could do with a bit of danger in my life, and I have taste-testers a-plenty."

She reached over and cupped a hand over the pouch, sliding it towards herself and making it disappear behind the bar.

"How long am I holding it?" Peri asked.

"Oh, a few hours, a day at most? Depending on how it pans out, either I return for it or Cobalt Bluefount might come asking for it."

Peri stared. "Cobalt Bluefount? As in, the Bluefounts Bluefount?

"Yes. Him."

"So what do I do if he shows up?"

Iris blinked. "You... give it to him, obviously. Y... you didn't think I'd ask you to fight him over it or something?"

Peri pulled a face, somewhat humorous, but as she straightened up to her full height, there was a suggestion that she could back her words with her fists just fine. "What, you don't think I could take him?"

"You could take him for sure, but he strikes me as the type to run to his mom and tattle."

Peri winced at that.

"I'm not hitting Celeste Bluefount," Peri muttered quietly, shaking her head. "You probably drop dead instantly if you try. Some guy in the bushes throws a poisoned dart into your neck, and thwip--you keel over."

Iris would have thought it an exaggeration before, but apparently poisoning was more common in Kaleidoscope Rames than she expected. 

"Probably," she agreed instead, and chugged her lemonade.

She forgot there was ice in it, and she got a brain freeze. That was about on par with how the rest of her week was going.


End file.
